Diamond Warriors

procure for their dinner. Greasy plumes of smoke spiraled up into a sky glowing blue-black. The moon, waxing full, reflected a silver light onto the grasslands about us, and set the river's waters to sparkling. I looked up at Aras, Solaru and Varshara, outshining all the other stars in the heavens and so bright that they seemed to blaze like little suns. They pointed the way toward that place on earth where I thought that Kane might have gone.

This was a small hill to the east of the Meshian tents and just to the north of the river. This nameless hump of ground rose up almost in line with the distant Owl's Hill across the steppe and the much greater rocks of the Detheshaloon. Other warriors I queried confirmed that Kane had indeed ridden his horse up the hill's grassy slopes. I followed him, on foot. It did not take me long to hike up to the top, where I found Kane standing beneath the stars. He held a diamond-dusted sharpening stone, the one that had once belonged to my brother, Mandru, and that I had passed on to Kane. He drew it down the edge of his sword in long strokes that set the steel to ringing. As I came up close to him, he said to me, 'Have you come to help me prepare for tomorrow, then?'

'Is that what you are doing up here?'

He looked at me through the thin light. 'I am sorry for what passed with Liljana — will you forgive me?'

'Ask that of her.'

'I will,' he muttered. And then. 'There are always battles to be fought, eh?'

I pointed toward the camfires to the north and said. 'Yes — and that is our enemy.'

'So they are,' he muttered again. 'The Ikurian horse, at least, have good armor: some of the best mail made outside the Nine Kingdoms. If Morjin placed them on his left wing, as you think he will we'll have a hard work cutting through it.'

'Everything,' I said to him, 'will be a hard work tomorrow.'

'At least you'll have a chance to take your revenge far the Ikurians killing Asaru.'

'Bemossed,' I told him, 'would not like to hear you speak like that.'

He looked down the hill, back toward the Meshian encampment, where my pavilion stood out in the light of the mows and stars. He muttered, 'He is like a flower, the most beautiful of flowers. So easy to trample or cut. Morjin would pluck him in a moment just to watch him wither.'

'Bemossed is stronger than you know.'

'There is strength, and there is strength. The sight of a perfect cherry blossom can make even the mightiest of warriors weep, eh? But for how long does a blossom hold its splendor of perfection? A day, Valashu. No more than a single day.'

'If what you have told of the Maitreya is true, then Bemossed's day has not yet come. At his quickening, when he finally holds the Lightstone in his hands, then — '

'That is why we must fight tomorrow,' Kane broke in. 'Despite what Bemossed would have us do.'

I turned north, toward the great blaze of our enemy's camp-fires spread out beneath the Detheshaloon. and I said, 'Half a million men — Maram believes we have no chance against so many.'

I said nothing of what I had seen inside Atara's crystal

'So — we have a chance,' Kane paused in his scraping his diamond stone against his sword in order to look across the steppe's starlit grasses. 'He is out there, somewhere, Morjin is. He can be killed, with steel like any other man. You have forced him out of Argattha to take a terrible chance. You and Bemossed have. And that is our chance.'

I smiled grimly and said, 'Who is it who wishes to take revenge?'

He smiled, too, and his white teeth shone in the moonlight. 'I would as soon see your sword pierce his heart as I would mine.'

I drew Alkaladur then, and watched the heavens' radiance play upon its long blade. How many men, I wondered yet again, had I slain with this shining sword? How many more must I cleave and send bloodied to earth?

'I have hated this kind of killing,' I said to him, 'as I have hated nothing else.'

'So — but you have loved it, too, eh?'

Kane's savage gaze locked onto me in a silent understanding. Who knew better than he the terrible joy of fighting for one's life that made a man feel so utterly alive?

'Yes, I have loved it,' I admitted. 'And that is why I have hated it. And why war must end. There must be another way to such exaltation that does not degrade us so.'

Kane did not dispute this. But he growled out to me: 'Worry about being degraded after you've killed Morjin!'

'A chance,' I told him, staring at Alkaladur's silvery blade, 'one chance more slender than the edge of this. Master Juwain was right when he told me that swords alone will never be enough. Tomorrow, the Seven will have their work to do, too. And Alphanderry — and of course, Bemossed. Even Maram.'

I drew in a deep breath smelling of sunburnt grass and roasting flesh. Tomorrow, I thought, the day would wax long and hot, for tonight the air blew too warm across the glistering steppe. Then I said to Kane, 'And you — you must do what you were born to do.'

'So,' he said in time with a long rasp of stone against steel, 'so I must.'

'I do not mean killing men, Kane.'

'No? What is it that you think I must do, eh?'

I looked up at the bright constellations standing out like diamonds against the black silk of the sky. Their onstreaming light pointed toward mysteries long lost to the ages, the great ages of the universe that the angels called satras. Kane, I thought, was himself a mystery nearly as deep as the other universes beyond the stars.

I lifted my sword higher, and I willed the words etched into its blade to flare forth. Alkaladur's silustria suddenly shone with fiery white characters: Vas Sama Yeos Valarda Sola Paru... And I said to Kane, 'You made this sword, and you cut these letters into it — what is the rest of the inscription?'

Kane stared at the blade that I held gleaming beneath the sky, and he shook his head. 'I told you, I have forgotten.' 'Have you really?' I asked hirn. 'Has Kalkin forgotten, then?'

His hand locked around his sword's hilt as he shouted at me: 'You promised not to say that name!'

I drew in a deep breath to slow the beating of my heart. I said to him, 'You are who you are. And you — '

'I am no longer he, I say! I am this one, whom you see standing here, and no one else!'

The wind, blowing down from the Detheshaloon. whipped his white hair about his savage face.

'But how is it possible,' I asked him, 'to forget?' 'How is it that you don't remember the day your mother breathed life into you and named you Valashu?'

Now it was my turn to shake my head. 'But you have lived through. . so much. Kalkin has. It was he who took the lead in the war against Angra Mainyu, wasn't it? Over Varkoth and Marsul — even Ashtoreth? Why, then? Why did one of the Elijik order take precedence over the greatest of the Galadin?'

'Why do the stars shine, damn it!' he growled at me. 'Who set the world turning day into night, you tell me!'

He stared at my sword, and it seemed to flare even brighter. I said to him, 'You know. I know you know.'

'I know nothing!'

Now I stared back at him, looking for the bright being that he had never quite been able to hide from me.

'Tell me,' I said to him.

'Don't look at me that way, damn it!'

'Don't lie to me — we've come too far for that!' I lowered my sword slightly, in case the madness seized Kane again, and he saw me as his enemy, as he had Liljana. 'At the beginning of the War of the Stone, you journeyed to another world. The angels name it Agathad, yes? And we call it Skol, where the Galadin dwell. And you led Ashtoreth and Valoreth, all the others, in forging the true Alkaladur, didn't you? To heal Angra Mainyu. This is told. As you love me, tell me why!'

Kane put away his sharpening stone, and stood away from his horse. He held his sword with both hands, then ran his finger down the flat of the kalama's long blade. He looked at me. The stars' light set his hair ashimmer, and his eyes. I saw him searching for something within me, and within himself. His heart beat hard — once, twice, thrice, a hundred times. It swelled with the hurt of trying to contain the great force of life that surged through him. I